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Title: The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View
ISBN: 0345368096
Author:
Richard Tarnas
Publicate Date: 1993-03-16
Publish: 1993-03-16
List Price: $17.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $7.77
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.32
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Passion Requited
This book sets itself a hugely ambitious goal: to summarize in a single volume the history of Western thought with reference to the dominant cluster of cultural ideas in a given period that purport to "explain" reality, and also to summarize the most significant ramifications of those explanations. Tarnas divides his book into three macro-sections: classical, medieval, and modern, which, as he explains, are in turn dominated by ideas of a philosophical, theological, and scientific character, respectively. He begins with Plato (and briefly touches upon a number of pre-Socratic thinkers as well in this section) and ends, roughly 500 odd pages later, with a survey and analysis of Postmodernism.
The text has, in my view, two really outstanding characteristics: 1) Tarnas has the ability to synthesize an absolutely *enormous* amount of information, much of it-- indeed most of it--of a difficult, densely conceptual nature. An extraordinary amount of ground is covered in a relatively brief space, and yet the text never, in this reader's opinion, conveys the sense that significant thought has been either omitted, or falsely simplified. This alone would seem to be quite an achievement, and yet it would not count for much were it not for virtue number 2):
The very high degree of *clarity* in Tarnas' exposition. Everything is understandable! I should add here a point of personal bias: this type of book is ordinarily not my cup of tea. Endless philosophical abstractions, or theological abstractions, or indeed, any type of lengthy discourse which is exclusively abstract, I find very, very dry, and tend to stay away from, or pursue only in small doses. But here the operative word really does seem to be "passion," as the title indicates. Any thinker purporting to explain what is ultimately important in the "reality" in which we dwell would, presumably, at his or her core, be excited and enthusiastic if they thought they had arrived at anything really approximating a fundamental truth. And I think this is what Tarnas manages to consistently unearth and clearly convey. It is this sense of a genuinely exciting intellectual journey, clearly conveyed throughout, that is the singular achievement of this volume. It's a good book!.
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2: A page-turner I don't entirely trust
The comment on the jacket is right, the author has made quite a story of what could be pretty dry material. As an introduction to the history of Western thought on the level of, say, Joseph Campbell's work (one of those quoted as praising it), I'd recommend it. In fact I got so interested in the the implications of what looked like a quote from Justin Martyr that I went looking for the original.
Fortunately, what we have of Justin Martyr's work is on the web, and it does not take very long to read it all. Unfortunately, the quoted phrase was not present in that work. Instead of unreservedly praising Plato as a "Christian before Christ", Justin Martyr actually spent a lot of time saying unkind things about him and the harmfulness of his philosophy. He did in one place suggest that a virtuous man like Socrates should indeed be regarded as a christian, following the spirit of Christ before his appearance, but Plato was not mentioned in that connection. I saw nothing that would really support the point that Tarnas seemed to want to make. And then in the last chapter Tarnas went off on a tangent that seemed to me of minor significance and doubtful validity.
So a good read, and worth the time as a first introduction or as a source of interesting ideas, but not entirely trustworthy. Anything you are going to rely on from it should be checked.
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3: A View from the Inside
A single-volume history of the ideas that have shaped the Western mind. Unique in its capacity to empathize with all the variant worlds it describes, bringing history to vibrant life. It's a page turner. You can't wait to read what happens next in this complex narrative, and then you realize it is telling your own story.
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4: bias of reviewers prevents them to see the positive
I think, Richard Tarnas has done a spectacular job of compressing the whole history of the west into one comprehensive volume. Being a PhD student of science who has also explored spiritual ideas, I really like the fact that the author tries to highlight the existential crisis facing the world today.
I really recommend this book and would suggest people to be wary of negative
reviews on the book. The people who have negative opinions about the book and consider the eplilogue wacky are in denial of the fact that every opinion that they make can also be classified as wacky and subjective. In this pluralistic and subjective world they need to tolerant of opinions if they consider themselves reasonable. But if people want to be completely close minded about anything except their apriori judgements about things like depth psychology, what can be done. They ignore the fact that inconsistency rules even the most precise branch of science --mathematics. Godel's incompleteness theorem actually led to this conclusion.
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5: pity about the lapse into new age speculation
I won't write much here as many have done a great job of summation, however I did just want to voice my disappointment with the epilogue. Much of the book seems to have the intellectual and reasearch rigour I like to see in such books, but the new age nonsense really leads me to question his credibility and so doubt I read till I reached it. Though its obviously not as up to date or the same in its attempted scope I would personally recommend Russell's "History of Western Philosophy" for a more insightful look at Western thought or even Watson's "Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud".
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